Bush no care about me? That's unpossible!
Excellent coverage of a poll in tomorrow's Washington Post. This actually cheers me up, because it makes me think that the American public is finally getting what I've been ranting about. We may actually have hope to beat him with his own stick.
Fewer Say Bush Cares About Them (washingtonpost.com)
Polls Show President's 'Compassion' Rating Falling Steadily
By Dana Milbank and Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 4, 2004; Page A01
As he approaches the November election, President Bush has shed a good part of the "compassionate conservative" image he cultivated during the 2000 election, a Washington Post poll has found.
Bush came to office three years ago with a message that he was different from traditional Republican conservatives because he was promoting programs for the poor and disadvantaged. But with his presidency dominated by foreign policy issues and such traditional conservative favorites as tax cuts, he has dropped from his speeches the compassionate conservative moniker that was his trademark in 2000.
(snip)
Whether this loss of compassion credentials is a problem for Bush depends on which voters prove to be the decisive bloc in November. Political strategists say the Bush campaign is gambling that it can win largely by mobilizing core GOP voters in large numbers -- a departure from recent elections, in which many moderate "swing" voters were the key.
(snip)
Still, Bush has made gestures that appear to be aimed at his conservative supporters rather than moderates: a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the recess appointments of conservative judges and ending the expiration of his tax cuts. Last week, 31 Senate Republicans broke with Bush and voted to increase child-care funding for welfare recipients. As a result of such White House positions, said Andrew Kohut, a pollster who directs the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, Bush's standing has slipped among independents and even moderate Republicans.
"The working assumption is that because things are polarized, there can't be a lot of people up for grabs," Kohut said, "but the middle is still swinging." Kohut thinks three in 10 voters could still change their minds -- and at the moment, they favor the Democrats on domestic issues.
Respondents to the Washington Post poll, conducted March 10 to 14 and confirmed in subsequent polling, supported this view.